Saturday, April 9, 2011

THE LOGIC BEHIND LIBYA DECISIONS

The Logic Behind The Libya DecisionDid India do the right thing in abstaining from the vote on UN Resolution 1973 onLibya? It is easy to criticise India for being foolish and cowardly. However, thedecision is defensible and may prove to be a sensible one.Those who argue that India should have voted for the no-fly zone and for theauthorisation to use all means, short of occupation, to protect the Libyan peoplebase their case on three main contentions.The first is that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is busy killing defenceless people, andIndia should have supported what is a morally proper move to protect those whocannot protect themselves.The second contention is that since the Arab League and Muslim opinion in manyplaces were behind 1973, India, as a member of the UN Security Council for thenext two years, would have earned the understanding, if not gratitude, of thesecountries by voting for the resolution.The third contention is that India would have done well strategically. New Delhiwould have been regarded as a power player, as a ‘constructive’ member of theglobal community, and would have built bridges to the US and other westernpowers (as a ‘responsible stakeholder’). This would have strengthened India’scase for permanent membership of the Security Council.This is not a trivial case. Yet, abstaining is defensible on moral, political andstrategic grounds (voting against the resolution would have been almostimpossible).Morally speaking, the question is: if the world is to intervene against Gaddafi, whynot against others who may be as bad or worse? Indian diplomats at the UNargued it would have been proper to get more evidence of the situation in Libya.Clearly, Gaddafi’s men are killing ordinary unarmed citizens as well as those whomight be lightly armed. Yet, there are places in Africa where the situation isharrowing. Is Gaddafi’s Libya worse? Furthermore, what if rebellions such asLibya’s explode into violence in several other places? Will the world rush to defendthose peoples as well? This seems unlikely, given the pool of resources to dealwith such problems.There is another moral quandary. Will the opposition in Libya be more democraticand respectful of human rights? The groups fighting Gaddafi are, reputedly,drawn from diverse clans and tribes. Will they live in peace with each other andother Libyans? No leadership worth the name has emerged, and no party orcouncil with a vision for the future has made its appearance to help us decidethese questions. Bad as Gaddafi is, are we even reasonably sure that interventionwould leave Libyans happier?Politically, while many Muslims are calling for Gaddafi to be stopped, there arealso many others fearful of what an intervention by largely western forces willmean politically. In the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, westernersfighting Muslims and killing them (even if unintentionally in their bombing raidsagainst Gaddafi) could be destabilising for a whole range of governments – andworrisome for liberal modernisers in various countries who will be identified aspro-western because of their liberalism.Finally, Indian strategic caution over Libya is not incomprehensible. Libya couldbecome an unending military quagmire and help radicalise many Muslims who willincreasingly see intervention as a West-versus-Islam war, if it drags on. India willnot be helped by a world in which Islamic extremists gain ground. There is alsothe ingress of China into Africa and other regions, as Beijing presents itself as abulwark against bullying western democracies. Voting with the West and allowingChina to stand as the champion of the weak in Africa, Asia and Latin America isnot a strategic plus for India.Finally, and most crucially, there is India’s insistence on the sanctity ofsovereignty. With so many internal dissidents in India, New Delhi unsurprisingly isextremely wary about supporting intervention, even on humanitarian grounds, forfear that this might be turned against India someday.Whether or not India has done right will become clear in the months and yearsahead. But to say that New Delhi’s decision was senseless and base is unfair.